EDUCATION

We know nothing about education in Moseley before the C 18th. Perhaps a few of the wealthier farmers, from Tudor times onward, sent their sons to the Grammar School in Kings Norton. This was conducted in the old building which still stands in St. Nicholas' churchyard. Begun in 1536, some decades after the original half-timbering but perhaps contemporary, with the brick and stone cladding of the ground floor, the school closed four years later, but permitted to re-open in Edward VI's reign. In mid-Georgian times there were four boarding schools hereabout, at Wake Green, Cannon Hill (for girls), near the Chapel in the Village, and at Balsall Heath. But for most children in Moseley as elsewhere there was to be no education at all until the Sunday School movement began a few decades later.

In 1828 the congregation of St. Mary's opened a three-roomed school and master's house on Lett Lane : the enlargements of '88 and '94 produced the building on School Road, vacated in 1969. The original date stone is rather misleading set in the later front wall. Balsall Heath had a dame school in 1846, where for a copper a week a widow taught what little she knew to a few children. Eleven years later St. Paul's National School (built with aid from the National Schools Society, an Anglican charity) was opened in Vincent Street, as was the Sparkbrook C. E. School in Ladypool Road.

Following the 1870 Act, a School Board was elected for Kings Norton. At first it merely supported existing sectarian schools, including three Wesleyan buildings off Moseley Road in Balsall Heath. But many children of that crowded district were not attending for lack of room. Accordingly Mary Street and Clifton Road Board Schools were opened in 1878, and Tindal Street two years later. Until the Heath became part of Birmingham, the Board used to meet in a room at Clifton Road School : its last building in the district was Sherbourne Road School, 1889. Meanwhile middle-class Moseleians were sending their children to private schools, notably the Arnold School behind Five Lands House.

Birmingham School Board built Dennis Road School in 1896. The city's Education Committee took over six years later, but except for Moseley Road Art School (1910), there were to be only improvements in existing buildings during the next half-century. Tindal Street School damaged in the 'Blitz', and St. Paul's was destroyed. Queensbridge Secondary School opened in 1952 and Park Hill two years later, replacing Victorian villas. Sparkbrook School was closed in '38, and after use as an annexe for Dennis Road in the fifties is now demolished. Moseley Secondary School (not in Moseley) replaced Springfield Senior School in '55, and Mary Street was succeeded by the Percy Shurmer Schools on the Middleway in '67. Mount Pleasant (now Highgate) Comprehensive opened in the latter year. Looking like a factory, it may become one when the projected closure due to reduced numbers of pupils takes place.

Sectarian education in and around Moseley is well served with new schools. After 535 years in St. Luke's Road, the Jewish School moved in '65 to the King David site on Alcester Road. Moseley C. E. School re-opened in '69 on Oxford Road. St. Bernard's ('67), St. Martin's ('69), and St. Monica's ('70) are Catholic schools.

The Moseley and Balsall Heath Institute helped to provide adult education from 1883. More recently Institutes of Education have offered a wide choice of courses for evening students at local schools. Moseley cannot properly claim any colleges, but its name has been given to a building in Victorian Tudor style which was built as a college for Congregationalist ministers at Wake Green in 1854 : after several changes of function, it was bought by Birmingham Education Committee and opened as a Grammar School in 1922. It is now part of Moseley Comprehensive School.

The drastic decline in the birth-rate of recent years has caused closure and amalgamation of several schools, and others will follow.

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